2024 MINI Cooper SE Prototype Test Drive

Smart Wannabe said:
They probably don’t want to waste effort and expenses to procure more parts than needed. The order book probably will close early. Probably 2024 will be allowed to be ordered end of this year
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How often does the new head of MINI, Stefanie Wurst, refresh her "My Chinese MINI Factory" screen to see how soon Great Wall Motors and a few MINI people will be churning out the MINI Good Cat? I'd assume they would prefer to keep making EVs in Oxford until the new factory comes online.

I'll be surprised if they start taking orders for the 2024 MINI Electric in 2022. Also, now that MINI's announced they're going to make a good one and a not-so-good one, you can bet the good one everyone wants will come along later.
 
Smart Wannabe said:
They probably don’t want to waste effort and expenses to procure more parts than needed. The order book probably will close early. Probably 2024 will be allowed to be ordered end of this year
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The report I linked to previously had a quote in it saying that they had 18 months until the car launched, which is September 23. I’d imagine that they’ll keep pumping them out out of Oxford until that time; particularly if they don’t have to shut down the line to retool for the new car since it is being built in China.
 
insightman said:
How often does the new head of MINI, Stefanie Wurst, refresh her "My Chinese MINI Factory" screen to see how soon Great Wall Motors and a few MINI people will be churning out the MINI Good Cat? I'd assume they would prefer to keep making EVs in Oxford until the new factory comes online.

I'll be surprised if they start taking orders for the 2024 MINI Electric in 2022. Also, now that MINI's announced they're going to make a good one and a not-so-good one, you can bet the good one everyone wants will come along later.
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I read somewhere that the approximate timeline is to debut the car early 23 and start taking orders late 23. And yes the more hp, larger battery will likely be the prime mover.
 
Businesses aren't dumb. They're intent is to make money, they will price to demand. That typically doesn't mean lowering the price of the lower demand model.

The more things change, the more they stay the same though - the R53S and R56S were both great chassis with sketchy 3rd party powertrains. Time will tell if history repeats itself with the Great Wall power unit.
 
Is the new design still FWD? The original reason for FWD doesn't really apply to BEVs (smaller drivetrain, lighter design), and it's easy to put the electric motor anywhere. I get why the SE is FWD, it's based on the ICE platform. But the BMW i3 is RWD, so why not the new MINI?
 
Puppethead said:
Is the new design still FWD? The original reason for FWD doesn't really apply to BEVs (smaller drivetrain, lighter design), and it's easy to put the electric motor anywhere. I get why the SE is FWD, it's based on the ICE platform. But the BMW i3 is RWD, so why not the new MINI?
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All of the Ora Cats seem to be FWD, so between MINI's history and that, presumably yes.
 
Carsten Haase said:
The SE used old battery tech when it was launched so the improvement is not from 2 years ago but from some time before then.

There seems to be no good source on whether the SE uses CATL or the old i3 battery but this is supposedly info from the MINI engineers saying it's the old 94aH i3 tech which would mean the battery is from 2017. There's been a lot of improvement in the past 5 years.
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As i own2014 BMWI 3 for 6 years with 60 ah battery this car was a faster car up to day from all BMW I 3 bc they add a weight every year .and SE is slower of 2022 than 2014 BMW I 3 wight 2600 lbs
 
Puppethead said:
Is the new design still FWD? The original reason for FWD doesn't really apply to BEVs (smaller drivetrain, lighter design), and it's easy to put the electric motor anywhere. I get why the SE is FWD, it's based on the ICE platform. But the BMW i3 is RWD, so why not the new MINI?
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All front wheel drive cars are cheaper to build
 
teslarati97 said:
If Ora is manufacturing the car in China, it will likely be a LFP battery pack instead of NCM which could require about 33% more weight (150wh/kg LFP vs 200wh/kg NCM). So if you want to go to 40kWh you would have to increase the existing 32.6kWh pack by 22% and 1.33x the weight.

Even estimating at 200wh/kg, that would work out to roughly 360lbs for the current Cooper SE battery pack plus the battery tray + cooling + glycol (let's say 100 lbs). So that could work out to 584lbs for the 40kWh or 224lbs extra? We are only guessing right now.
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With my experience with BMWI 3 own 2014 everything after that year bc off
o weight was slower and that will happen with SE 2022 will be a car to keep for ever this Chinese crab will be slower bc of weight and crappy production

Be with SE
 
CuriousGeorge said:
Can't say that I fully believe it, but this story claims that the next-generation SE will be *lighter* than the current version.

https://insideevs.com/news/575678/2024-mini-cooper-se-shorter-roomier-current-model/
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I believe it, there's a lot of duplicated structure (wasted weight) in the current design.

The chassis was optimized for a combustion engine focusing on weight in the engine bay and not in the transmission tunnel (minimal strength needed to support an exhaust). Adding the battery means they had to increase strength of the battery pack shell to compensate but could not remove excess in the engine bay (due to the shared chassis).

In the ground up design they could also potentially use the battery as structure, new battery tech is more energy dense, pack design can be optimized for weight (rather than being limited to an existing space) and the car being smaller also saves weight.
 
Chiming in on projected weight, the honda-e is built on a dedicated ev platform and it weighs 3,350lbs and has a 35.5kwh battery. Its dimensions are similar to the current f56 ( it has four doors ) but like the ora cat has more interior space due to no transmission/ exhaust tunnel. This a broad assumption but if the Honda-e weighs more than the current gen Mini SE I find it hard to believe that the next gen Mine E and SE will weigh less than 3000lbs. This is all an educated guess but I would be shocked to see more expensive metals used to save weight and expect mostly steel for chassis and suspension.

More power through the front wheels also seems silly, Great Wall will never apply evolved versions of the revo knuckle employed on the civic type r to reduce torque steer and will inevitably just rely on the ecu to cut power like the current car. This will just result in frustration for any real driving enthusiast pushing the car out of a corner.

I am completely biased but I feel like the current gen SE is a but of skunkworks vehicle, parts bin special with a similar story to the 1M coupe. Stuff the highest output electric motor into the lightest front wheel drive chassis and see what happens. That's basically what they did. They could have put a detuned version of the i3 motor but they didn't.
 
Luis Hoffer said:
Chiming in on projected weight, the honda-e is built on a dedicated ev platform and it weighs 3,350lbs and has a 35.5kwh battery. Its dimensions are similar to the current f56 ( it has four doors ) but like the ora cat has more interior space due to no transmission/ exhaust tunnel. This a broad assumption but if the Honda-e weighs more than the current gen Mini SE I find it hard to believe that the next gen Mine E and SE will weigh less than 3000lbs. This is all an educated guess but I would be shocked to see more expensive metals used to save weight and expect mostly steel for chassis and suspension.

More power through the front wheels also seems silly, Great Wall will never apply evolved versions of the revo knuckle employed on the civic type r to reduce torque steer and will inevitably just rely on the ecu to cut power like the current car. This will just result in frustration for any real driving enthusiast pushing the car out of a corner.

I am completely biased but I feel like the current gen SE is a but of skunkworks vehicle, parts bin special with a similar story to the 1M coupe. Stuff the highest output electric motor into the lightest front wheel drive chassis and see what happens. That's basically what they did. They could have put a detuned version of the i3 motor but they didn't.
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The Honda E also manages to have a worse range than the MINI even with it's fancy camera mirrors and larger battery capacity so maybe not the best example to compare to.

The Ora good cat is 3323lbs which is already less than the Honda E even though the Ora has 12.3kWh more battery capacity. The MINI is supposed to be based on it but shorter with two less doors and a smaller battery. I can't imagine how those changes wouldn't result in a decent weight savings
 
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